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EPA cleaning up soil contaminated with lead in Muhlenberg
The work at Sacred Heart Villa is expected to be finished in the spring.
Nearly a decade after residential properties contaminated with lead around a battery plant were cleaned up, soil remediation is underway at Sacred Heart Villa, a 100-bed personal care home in Muhlenberg Township.
The former convent is one of a handful of properties - including a 16-acre campground in Muhlenberg - that has not yet been remediated. Cleanups can take up to eight years.
The Sacred Heart cleanup, though, was delayed - at least in part - to Exide Technologies' multiple bankruptcies.
The remediation effort began Nov. 8 with moving equipment and materials to the former convent turned personal care home. The project is expected to be completed when shrubs and trees damaged during excavation are replaced sometime in the spring, said Roy Seneca, an EPA spokesman.
Soil testing data shows Sacred Heart has among some of the highest lead concentrations within a three-quarter-mile radius around Exide where the cleanup was focused.
Less than five of the convent's 27 acres will be remediated, Seneca said.
Remediation involves excavating the top layer of soil and replacing with clean fill.
In the years before the Exide smokestack was idled, the plant rained down more than a ton of lead onto the surrounding communities each year, according to self-reported data to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Lead is a toxin that has shown to pose irreparable harm - especially to children - even at low exposure levels.
Melissa Floyd, an Exide spokeswoman, declined to comment, saying company offices were closed until Tuesday.
The cleanup stems from a 2000 consent order in which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency instructed Exide to investigate the extent of lead contamination in the soil near its Laureldale plant and clean up the affected properties.
The company remediated 220 residential properties, which was completed in 2009.
Exide is responsible for the cleanup costs, which the company has never disclosed.
Sister Deborah Reho, a Sacred Heart spokeswoman for the cleanup, was unavailable Friday for comment.
But Reho previously told the Eagle that she believed the remediation effort was raised again this year - two years after the global battery maker emerged from bankruptcy - because of heightened attention to the issue following a soil study collaboration between the Eagle and Metropolitan State University.
Published over two days in April, the "Coming clean" series found some properties that should have been cleaned nearly a decade ago were contaminated with lead.
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. called on EPA to revisit the cleanup. In response, EPA tested 20 properties and embarked on a review - still underway - of the model used to determine cleanup levels, which is site specific.
Environmentalists have long considered a review overdue because the model relies on now outdated recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to reduce blood-lead levels in children.
The trigger level has since been cut in half and is under consideration to be scaled back further in light of research that has found damaging effects of lead exposure at low levels.
Toxicologists now believe no amount of lead is safe.
Contact Nicole C. Brambila: 610-371-5044 or nbrambila@readingeagle.com.
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